Changing the canon: Chinua Achebe's women, public
sphere and the politics of inclusion in Nigeria.

Abstract:

This paper examines the subjugation of Nigerian women with regard
to how their political marginalisation constricts the public sphere, the
resource centre of public opinion, which strengthens the ideals of
democracy and good governance. The political marginalisation of women in
Nigeria is a rectilinear upshot of their low participation in government
and politics necessitated by patriarchy. This patriarchal practice has
animated the urgency of expanded public sphere as well as feminism, an
ideological, aesthetic and cultural movement, steeped in agitating for
the rights of women and expanding the frontiers of their participation
in the political process. In the political novel Anthills of the
Savannah, which is to be considered in this paper, Chinua Achebe has
deftly refracted the rise of new Nigerian women, who are generation
changers. Beatrice represents Achebe's new women; her portraiture
in the novel interrogates postcolonial Nigerian politics of
disempowerment, marginalisation, shrunken public sphere and gendered
space that occlude good governance.

"The dichotomy between the private and the public sphere is
central to almost two centuries of feminist writing and political
struggle; it is, ultimately, what the feminist movement is about."

--Carole Pateman, Public and Private in Social Life, 1980.

A major motif of postcolonial Nigerian state is the exploitation
and marginalisation of women in politics. This system is sustained by
the logic of patriarchy, male chauvinism, and gendered political
mechanics, which undermine democratisation as well as undercut the
expansion of the public sphere, a discursive space for democracy and
good governance. In apprehending how the public sphere is narrowed in
postcolonial Nigeria, it is crucial to understand the level of access
women have in political participation. Political participation is an
integral facet of the public sphere, a space for the
institutionalisation of alternative views and discourses needed for
inclusive politics. It is in this space that women, who are the bulk of
the subaltern, in the Spivakean parlance, articulate "their own
scripts which envision alternative ways of ordering political, public
and private life" (Tripp 2000: 27). In ensuring this, literature is
cardinal in the process of deconstructing, rewriting, and reconstructing
the political history of Nigerian women. This is so because Nigerian
literature mediates between a "bewildering amalgam of
sociopolitical contingencies and economic realities" (Kehinde 2008:
333) that beleaguer Nigeria and the search for an alternative order.

The dimension of power dissonance within Nigeria's
socio-political and cultural turf following sexist political paradigm
has left a balance sheet of androgynous lore and order, decline in the
true worth of women and their indigenous institutions, marginalisation,
underdevelopment, and shrunken public sphere. The contention put forward
by Kunle Ajayi in his piece "Gender Self-Endangering: The Sexist
Issue in Nigerian Politics", underpins sexist politics in Nigeria:

As a result, feminist writing is informed by the need to break the
patriarchal mould which contrives discriminatory political roles to
Nigerian women by assigning negative stereotypes to them by men in order
to hijack the public sphere.

This is so because patriarchy shrinks the confines of the public
sphere. Literature is therefore essential in reconfiguring
Nigeria's political process; hence, "... there is a direct
relationship between literature and social institutions. The principal
function of literature is to criticise these institutions and eventually
bring about desirable changes in the society" (Maduka 1981:11).

Within this rubric, Nigerian feminist writing considers literature
as being central to the history of discourse and debates on womanhood
and feminism (Marks and Courtivron 1989: 39; Decker 2004: 108). Nigerian
feminist writers therefore see art (literature) as a role-reversing
narrative, essentially contrived to deflect stereotypes,
misrepresentation, and skewed knowledge about the true worth of women,
particularly in politics. In this light, the significance of early
feminist writers in Nigeria is a canonical revolution to transcend the
tradition that shores up the rhetoric of female oppression and
inhumanity. This attempt has paid off: it has widened the public sphere
as well as deconstructed discourses in Nigerian literature, politics and
philosophical thought. Thus,

The early novels of Flora Nwapa, Efuru (1966) and Buchi
Emecheta's Second Class Citizens (1975) and The Bride Price (1976)
are replete with stories of the Subjugation of women and their
maltreatment. These Novels placed women in conflict of sorts and showed
how they resolved their various dilemma. (Chukwuma 2007:135)

In women's struggle for self-fulfilment, Nigerian writers
(feminists) have reconfigured womanhood, prioritising female
individualism and empowerment--thereby subverting the seeming
powerlessness of women to political authority. By extrapolation, they
have upturned the saliency of women transformation of the public sphere
through literary production that engages with this reality. The
diachronic transformation of Achebe's women, from victims of a
society regulated by patriarchal cultural norms and values (Fonchingong
2006: 137) to independent, political conscious and self-assertive
women--as we se in Beatrice, instantiates Achebe's political and
literary commitment to use women empowerment as a conduit for the
expansion of the public sphere for inclusive governance.

Following in the footsteps of early feminist writers in Nigeria,
Chinua Achebe has engaged with Nigeria's modus operandi of
governance as well as the expansion of its public sphere for the
consolidation of democratic ideals through feminist aesthetics.
Achebe's aesthetic preoccupation with the expansion of the public
sphere and good governance finds resonance in the craft of Anthills of
the Savannah, where he modifies his previous idea of women--thereby
seeing them as political actors and people with a voice capable of
changing gender relations through participation in the business of the
public sphere.

As far as gender is concerned, Achebe's use of Beatrice and
her role in the novel to ingratiate himself with leftist feminists is
quite transparent, and the measure of his success is feminists'
frequent citation of Anthills of the Savannah as a work informed by a
progressive attitude towards gender relations, in contrast to his
earlier works which they see as suffused with patriarchal subjugation of
women. (Owomoyela 2002: 4)

In connection with the above, the sinew of Achebe's
paradigmatic shift is moored in feminising his aesthetics for
democratised public sphere and the formation of a modern
"counterpublic", which will vouchsafe participatory democracy
and good governance. Achebe's aesthetic preoccupation dovetails
with Ania Loomba's in her Colonialism/Postcolonialism, where she
argues that postcolonial women's position in the postcolonial
experience is an unbroken imaginings of the disparate levels and
paradigms of liberation; a method of "re-writing indigenous
history, appropriating postcolonial symbols and mythologies, and
amplifying where possible, the voice of women" (2005: 191).

For Achebe, liberating Nigerian women from "the peripheral,
tangential role of passive victim of masculine-based cultural
universe" (Mezu 1994:27-28), is a function of literature, hence,
"Literary works serve as a means by which the predicaments of
women. can be represented and condemned" (Kehinde 2006: 170)
thereby calling for change. Put simply, the production of Achebean
feminist narrative resonates with interrogating Nigeria's
overarching, patriarchal dominance of women in politics, which negates
the expansion of the public sphere. By allowing women's voice to be
heard in the deafening clatter of male universe (the public sphere)
Achebe has redefined the very language of their identity and political
participation.

Theoretical Clarification

The theoretical framework of this study is predicated upon Nancy
Fraser s revisionist study of Jurgen Habermas theory of the public
sphere, a realm "made up of private people gathered together as a
public and articulating the needs of society with the state"
(Habermas 1991: 176). Jurgen Habermas s seminal work, The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere: an Inquiry into a Category
ofBourgeois Society (1962) has attracted widespread attention in recent
debates concerning the interface between the public and the private
spheres. In the line of thought of the cultural theorist, Habermas, the
book questions the status of public opinion in the exercise of
representative democracy and governance. Although, originally used to
gauge the heartbeat of broadened public opinion as it affected the
public sphere in Western Europe, the concept, the public sphere, has
been appropriated by societies the world over to deal with their
disparate situations regarding expanding debates that bring about
democratic changes. For Hauser, the public sphere is "a discursive
space in which individuals and groups congregate to discuss matters of
mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common judgement"
(1999:117).

In the thinking of Nancy Fraser, it is basically "a site for
the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be
critical of the state" (1990: 57). In addition, Asen in his
"Toward a Normative Conception of Difference in Public
Deliberation", considers it as "a realm of social life in
which public opinion can be formed" (1999: 125). Through the book,
Habermas made an inroad into the belt of historical-sociological
exploration of the making, efflorescence and demise of the
"bourgeois public sphere" - his term, which was seen in the
past as being based on rational-critical debate, and was in effect
imaginary and exclusive of the masses (especially the women) in
political participation.

In furtherance of this, in Rethinking the Public Sphere, Fraser
offers some illuminating revisionism of Habermas'
historico-sociological description of the public sphere. The corollary
of Fraser's critique of Habermas' public sphere is: the public
sphere was originally tainted with exclusivity and hegemony, given the
Habermasian canon. In contrast to Habermas' contention on disregard
of "status altogether" (1991: 36) and exclusivity, Fraser has
argued that the bourgeois public sphere discriminated against the women
and those at the lower rung of the socioeconomic and political ladder.
The exclusion of the marginalised (women) from the universal public
sphere gave rise to Fraser's "subaltern counterpublic" or
"counterpublics". The revisionist approach Nancy Fraser
proffers resonates with feminist aesthetics and discourses, which stand
as "counterpublic" to popular public debates and discourses
(Benhabib 1992:89) that limit political participation of women,
especially in Nigeria, where they are the worst hit. The silent
feministic revolution enacted by Achebe's women is a systematic
advancement of democratic project in Nigeria, where the masses,
especially women are politically imperilled:

If women, who constitute at least 50% of the total population,
should bear any burden, it can only be reasonably expected that the rest
of the society will have to either directly or indirectly bear part of
the burden. (Olayinka 2006: iv)

Feminist ideologues and thinkers, particularly Carole Pateman,
claim that the revisionist approach enunciated by Nancy Fraser enhances
women s appropriation of the hegemonic power structure, which was prima
facie patriarchal--thereby limiting their level of political
participation because it is a system from the fraternal brothers (Caha
2005: 10).

Against this backcloth, feminist thinkers and writers have couched
their writing in ideo-aesthetic credo that haul salvoes against the
hegemonic imperatives ushered in by patriarchy--by breaking the barriers
between the private and public spheres, which is arguably the groundwork
of modern political thought and practice. Nigerian feminist writing,
which includes Chinua Achebe s later novels, is modelled upon literary
works and ideas that emphasise the need for women to challenge the
limitations posed by public-private dichotomy, insisting that it is
largely a patriarchal, chauvinistic culture. Therefore, such literature
in the thinking of Achebe should accentuate:

Parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social
groups invent and articulate counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional
interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs. (Fraser 1990:
67)

Interestingly, one of the integral "discursive arenas" of
the Fraserean "subaltern counterpublic" is literature; it is
an institution that could be used to challenge stereotyped beliefs and
system.

Iconoclasts of Phallocentric Walls: Chinua Achebe's Women and
Change

In feminist aesthetics, literature could be used to subvert
phallocentric views of women as inferior and apolitical; it could also
be used to interrogate anti-public-sphere mode of governance--as seen in
Anthills of the Savannah, where Achebe pillories the authoritarian
regime of Sam (His Excellency), the despot of Kangan. Kangan is an
imaginary militarised West African state a--simulacrum of Nigeria.
Beatrice's remark about Sam's detachment from the masses as a
result of shrunken public sphere, illustrates the abysmal hiatus between
the masses and the powers that be; it also eviscerates the malaise made
of the Nigerian polity through impervious political leadership:

It could be gleaned a priori from the above excerpt that Sam
loathes oppositional views and "counterpublic", to borrow
Fraser's term. Sam's statement shows his unwillingness to
engage with the masses whose interests do no matter in the political and
decision-making process of Kangan. It is against Nigeria's
oppressive political arrangement in which the women are the most hit
that Achebe's women seek to change the political landscape of their
world.

In appropriating "the will to change" (Mezu 1994: 217)
the patriarchal, political landscape of Nigeria, Achebe's women
have continued to demonstrate this penchant by becoming increasingly
aware of their political rights as illustrated in Achebe's later
works since the publication of his artistic primer, Things Fall Apart
(1958).

A perfunctory reading of Achebe's women in his earlier fiction
paints a picture of a diachronic development. Such reading, starting
from his debut novel, Things Fall Apart to the last one, Anthills of the
Savannah (1987), essentialises his commitment to incorporate the female
principle--thereby invoking his ideological and artistic commitment to
contribute to wider debate about bettering the leadership miasma of
postcolonial Nigeria, and Africa by extension. This approach is in
tandem with Ngugi's position that "every literature is a
commitment to a specific political ideology, and every writer is a
writer in politics" (Ngugi 1981: xii). The portraiture of women in
Things Fall Apart, gauges the heartbeat of a nation embroiled in
machismo politics and sexist culture:

In his sophomore novel, No Longer at Ease (1963), Achebe offers a
modification of his female characters, which culminates in Clara, Obi
Okonkwo's fiance, who is seen as being self-assertive and daring.
Unlike the image of women relayed in Thing Fall Apart--who are docile
and submissive and unthinking, Clara gets an abortion following Obi
Okonkwo's refusal to marry her. Although she fades away in the
novel, but Achebe presents to us the image of a changing group, who had
been at the lower rung of the societal ladder. In his third novel, A Man
of the People (1966), Achebe refracts a more commendable
characterisation of women. In the novel, we see Chief Nanga's wife,
who is disenchanted with her husband's extramarital activities,
especially regarding his intending marriage to Edna.

However, Achebe's paradigm shift in his refraction of
womanhood culminates in the creation of Beatrice, one of the
protagonists of Anthills of the Savannah - the true spirit and heart of
the novel--and a quintessence of Achebe's radical thinking on the
political roles of women in postcolonial Nigeria (Africa). She is the
blood, mind and voice of Achebe's new women (Owusu 1991: 468). The
portraiture of Beatrice finds expression in Achebe's preoccupation
with creating new women, who will be part of Africa's
(Nigeria's) transformation process.

Achebe's new women are in contradiction with the fabled good
women, who were being kept:

In addition, Achebe's new women challenge the rationale behind
public-private dichotomy--a phallocentric wall, which impinges on their
contribution to politics and the public sphere, "an
institutionalised arena of discursive interaction" (Fraser 1992:
110). Beatrice's stance on the political architectonics of Kangan,
where Anthills of the Savannah is set, is crucial in understanding women
empowerment through the expansion of the public sphere. For Beatrice, in
order to overturn public-private dichotomy thesis for more inclusive
politics, the Kangan (Nigerian) women should resist "being pushed
or tempted into accepting subservient or degrading or decorative
roles" (Evans 1987: 134) in politics. Therefore, women in her view
should be active participants in the drama of political and social
change. It is only through women's active political participation
and representation that the public sphere could be widened for policies
that could help galvanise sustainable democratic culture and good
governance. Although in the fictive realm, through the political
pragmatism of Beatrice, "Achebe believes that the time is now, for
the new nation of Africa, to invoke the female principle" (Ojinmah
1990: 103), which ultimately challenges public-private dichotomy by
considering every individual as a part of the public and a partaker in
economic, social, and political actions (Sen 1999: 19).

Achebe's new women negate the Negritudinal space that made
them court of last resort (92): there voices were never heard unless all
alternatives had been explored; hence, the Negritudinal universe
sustained patriarchal regimen and was moored to men's world. The
voice that echoes in such gendered, asphyxiating landscape calibrates
phallic tyranny and shrunken public sphere. It is to this end that
Achebe reasons that the political failure of postcolonial Nigeria is
largely lack of expansion of the Habermasian public space - by not
incorporating the views of the politically marooned. In Anthills of the
Savannah, Achebe traces the malaise of the nation as well as the
contracted public sphere to "the failure of our rulers to establish
vital links with the poor and the dispossessed of the country, with the
bruised heart that throbs painfully at the core of the nation's
being" (141). In putting the Kangan social space in context, it is
appreciable that the Kangan women are walled off from the political
apparatus in His Excellency's government. In circumventing the
patriarchal universe that impinges on women's rise from private to
public sphere, Beatrice says:

Thus, as long as politics does not consider everybody s opinion in
shaping public policies and governance, Beatrice argues that the human
society will be continually embroiled in "failed" mode of
governance and inept political leadership.

Furthermore, Achebe's new women contain that the interface
between the private and the public sphere should be taken as a nexus for
critical inquiry and contestation in the overall struggle for women
empowerment, particularly in politics. Thus, they argue that while the
democratisation project in Nigeria emphasises participatory governance
as well as widened public space for democratic deliberation, it remains
to be seen if these are not mere sloganeering; hence, women are not
adequately represented in the public space. The lopsided Nigerian
political structure that relegates women to the background is a case in
point, even as Nigeria preaches sustainable democracy after almost five
decades of her political independence. The ratio of men to women as
regards political representation in Nigeria is abysmally low; this
logically impacts on the inclusive nature of her democracy. As Edward
Said contends in his Beginnings: Intentions and Method, "You have
to step outside the novel, the play, for the larger truth" (1975:
25). Literature aside, the larger truth that Said's statement
adumbrates is the postcolonial Nigerian state, which is replete with
horrid tales of politics of disempowerment, especially the women in the
wake of sexist politics and "patriarchal superintendence that
suffocates the women out of any meaningful existence" (Nyamndi
2004: 220).

However, Achebe sees the new women symbolised by Beatrice turning:

What were formerly perceived as the private troubles of women into
public issues. They have shown how women's personal troubles in the
private sphere are in fact issues constituted by the gender inequality
of the social structure. (Oyewumi 2002: 2)

In changing the bitter history of women - which Achebe calls
"tragic history" through Beatrice, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in
her easy "Placing Women's History in History", reasons
that feminist consciousness places women at the centre of history by
recognising their peculiar role in the structuring of history and
political process (1982: 29). This attempt is what Beatrice sees as
"pulling up one of those spears thrust into the ground by the men
in their hour of defeat and left there in the circle of their last
dance" (83).

The inability of the political elite to incorporate feminist
principle in their political thought and practice is largely part of the
raison d'etre for shrunken public sphere and "failed
state" status of most African nations, especially Nigeria. In
congruence with this line of thought, Beatrice reasons that for her to
chart a new course for the political roles of women in Kangan politics,
she has to address it from a chauvinistic point of view, hence,
patriarchy is a system fashioned out of a grand design to trample on
women. We see this in her opinion of Ikem's political idea about
women:

For Beatrice, the new women should take political participation as
a chauvinistic activity through which their maligned essence in the
society could be overturned.

Even though the whole actions in the last chapter of Anthills of
the Savannah adumbrate the denouement of the plot - which is largely the
rise of Achebe's new (real) women, the christening of Elewa's
daughter, AMAECHINA: May-the-path-never-close by Beatrice is the
culmination of this fact:

The context of the above snippet dovetails with the rise of the
"subaltern"; it also provides an alternative perspective in
the novel, which is arguably anchored in Achebe's incorporation of
feminist philosophy in resolving the political crises in Nigeria. The
significance of the above expression inheres in what Onyemaechi Udumukwu
calls "double reversal" (2007b: 323) of history: first, a
boy's name is given to a girl; second, the ceremony is performed by
a woman--a grand sacrilege in the portraiture of Achebe's earlier
women. In fleshing out the subtext of this ceremony, Udumukwu argues
that:

It is therefore important to note here that the ceremony is a
clarion call for the democratisation of Nigeria's public space,
which finds expression in transformed public sphere. Beatrice's
response, "All of us" (225) to the question why she had to
name the baby ensconces Achebe's ideoaesthetic commitment to use
women empowerment to highlight the need for expanded public sphere and
participatory government in postcolonial Nigeria. The trope of "all
of us" throws up picturesquely women's involvement and
importance in the political process.

Beatrice as Achebe's Prototype Woman for Expanded Public
Sphere and Good Governance

Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah, is a postcolonial novel set
in Kangan, where Sam, the military Head of State, has come to power via
coup d'etat and "without any preparation for political
leadership" (12). The public sphere of Kangan is enmeshed in
"dilemmatic space", no communication between the state and the
masses. In this space, the political class has brazenly embarked on the
"privatisation of the public sphere", to allude Claude
Ake's famous words. The intensely stratified social hierarchy in
Kangan's socio-political space following Sam's power
drunkenness constitutes conflicts and tension in the polity. To this
end, the masses are not heard regarding how to move Kangan forward
politically. The socio-political imbalance created by this form of class
attrition shrinks the public sphere and reverberates with Achebe's
meditation on the matter with Nigeria: "the trouble with Nigeria is
simply and squarely a failure of (political) leadership" (1980: 1),
my parenthesis. In the words of Emmanuel Ngara, Kangan's political
and socio-economic milieu has rendered the downtrodden "either
pushed to periphery or relegated to oblivion" (1990: 122) thereby
shrinking the Habermasian public sphere that rather resounds with the
incorporation of the people's view in the political process.

The story of Anthills of the Savannah is principally relayed by
three people: Beatrice, Ikem and Chris. The novel refracts military
dictatorship and usurpation of power by the political class to the
detriment of the masses in Kangan (fictionalised Nigerian state). In his
Chinua Achebe: New Perspectives, Umelo Ojinmah says that in the novel:

In the universe of this novel, the Head of State, Sam (His
Excellency) is an absolute ruler, who is completely averse to
constructive criticism, wholesome dialogue and public opinion for
democratic governance. Sam s apathy to public opinion, a correlate of
public sphere, is atrophied in the cosmos of Chinua Achebe s Anthills of
the Savannah.

The shrunken public sphere in the novel--made possible by lack of
communication and dialogue between the people and the state is painted
in a bold relief in this brusque statement by Sam in the first page of
the novel: "I will not go to Abazon. Finish! Kabisa! Any other
business?" (1). Sam's statement negates the ideals of
Fraserean "counterpublic" thesis, hence, he does not want to
listen the opinion of the people of Abazon province, a place made
comatose by drought. Therefore, Sam's statement also challenges
such notions as ethical conduct, tolerance for opposition and the use of
power for the benefit of all in society (Ojinmah 1991: 61).

Moreover, another illustration of Kangan's shrunken public
sphere finds expression in the nature of the editorialising that Ikem
Osodi, the editor of The Gazette, the state controlled newspaper, does.
In order to reduce the level of the people's participation in the
political process, Sam, the "President-for-life", censors the
contents of the paper through Chris Oriko, the commissioner for
information - making sure that alternative vies and opinions are
stifled. In this space, the views of the people, especially
intellectuals, who are supposed to lead the way, are made prostrate via
the draconian regime of Sam. However, in the narrative, Achebe's
depiction of Beatrice shows that she is created to symbolise the
proverbial anthill that survives to tell the tale of the drought. The
drought here is emblematic of His Excellency's dictatorship.
Achebe's artistic predilection is couched in the way Beatrice
questions the validity of Kangan government, which she sees as
discriminatory of alternative views and people's political
preferences.

In her illuminating book, World, Class, Women, Robin Goodman
states:

It is possible still to identify survival itself with the future of
the public sphere and, as women are the hardest hit by such structural
adjustment policies, to identify the future of the public sphere itself
as dependent upon the direction of feminism. (2004:5)

In this context, Goodman's statement is understood to mean
that the expansion or transformation of the public sphere as well as the
future of the marginalised in the political arrangement is essentially
reliant on feminism. The statement above foregrounds the Habermasian
rider that takes into account the structural modification of the public
sphere, a development from the bourgeois public sphere, which reinforces
the normative universalising of patriarchy to
"differentiated", marginal public sphere, created by feminist
discourse and aesthetics.

Feminism is steeped in the termination of the dichotomy between the
private and public spheres that it considers the foundation of
contemporary political thought. Hence,

The separation of the public and private has perceived public life
to be identical with "men" and private life with
"women", making politics and men closely associated with one
another and leaving non-political activities to women. (Caha 2005:10)

Consequently, since patriarchy consigns women to the private
sphere--by making them raise children inside the phallic walls of the
family as well as makes them do mere housework in the homes and
families, there is a need for women to transcend the limiting,
chauvinistic walls of the private sphere--by transforming the dynamics
of the public sphere through their involvement particularly in political
actions. It is in view of this that Chinua Achebe's vision of women
translates into creating Beatrice Nwanyibuife--"A woman is also
something" (87). Yes, women are something; and Beatrice,
Achebe's prototype woman is "endowed with beauty, brains and
brawn" (118) needed crucially for the transformation of the public
sphere. Addressing the issue of whether the people could be considered
represented or marginalised in making political decision as well as
enhancing the ideals of the public sphere and democratisation, Achebe
has given women's contribution to democratic process a voice by his
creation of Beatrice. Beatrice's characterisation/persona in
Anthills of the Savannah ultimately evokes the hallmark of Achebe's
preoccupation with feminist principle, which is an integral part of
resolving postcolonial Nigeria's contradictions.

The craft of Anthills of the Savannah finds substance in
Achebe's women's political participation. In furtherance of
this argument, Ojinmah perceptively echoes similar view: "there is
a synthesis and assertive projection of the new views contained in the
earlier works" (1990: 84-5). This perspective according to Ojinmah
is in rhythm with "Beatrice's feminist activism" (1990:
85), which is central in resolving the postcolonial Nigerian politics,
narrowed public sphere and power dissonance. Thus,

It should be noted that Achebe moves from the peripheral role women
assume in the earlier novels to playing a central role in shaping and
mediating the realms of power in Anthills of the Savannah.Beatrice is
the fulcrum of social change right in the nucleus of socio-political
schema. The portrayal of Beatrice represents a woman shouldering the
responsibility of charting the course of female emancipation.
(Fonchingong 2006: 45)

In the novel, there is a palpable portraiture of women as being
conscious of the need to hold power for societal recognition and just
society. Women in this regard consider men's wielding of power as
the basis for their historical denigration and oppression:

In re-working power and subverting depersonalising loci of
authority for expanded public sphere, it is vital to understand that
Achebe's women have conceptualised power beyond mere tyranny and
repression by men. Rather, they consider its performance in various
societal interactions, socialisations and politicking. This
conceptualisation of power is in congruence with Michel Foucault's
thesis in his Power/Knowledge, in which he stresses that power:

Beatrice therefore sees expanding the discursive arena (the public
sphere) as a means of acquiring power for the emancipation of women and
the marginalised, who have been in men's thraldom; hence, power for
her is not fixated; it is fluid, and can be used by any group to further
their objectives, especially in the political process.

Among the various ways of contesting the realm of power is gaining
knowledge on how to move the society forward through political
participation. Through knowledge, women seek to find voices necessary
and capable of transcending the contradictions in world; hence,
knowledge is associated with power (Foucault 1977: 27). Beatrice's
knowledge gained from first class education in England is essentially
the source of her knowledge/power, to borrow Foucault's term. And
as a changer of her world, she insists that insights gained from
acquiring education (knowledge) should be made available to the people
in order to rise above tyranny.

Also, Beatrice's depiction in the novel symbolises Idemili,
the mythic goddess of "Water of God" (Diala 2005: 187),
responsible for neutralising men's power drunkenness. In his
tellingly titled book, The Anatomy of Female Power, Chinweizu, brings to
life the manipulative, persuasive and smooth kind of power that women
wield that is essential in transforming the public sphere. This is
because while patriarchal prowess could be obtrusive and crude, the
power of women is rather more political in nature: it dwells on the mind
and thought process, which are agents of political process. Let us here
Chinweizu:

The form of power above finds counterpart in the kind of power
Beatrice is imbued with in Anthills of the Savannah, where Achebe
depicts her as a politically manipulative character "between men
and power" (Diala 2005: 187).

In changing the concept of womanhood in the "Old
Testament" (97) as Achebe demonstrates with the characterisation of
Beatrice, contesting power with men is technically a function of making
impact in the public sphere; it shows women's metamorphosis from
the private to the public sphere. Achebe also orchestrates how this
space functions as a catalytic and illuminating platform that puts in
perspective the psychological condition or the private tragedy of one of
the protagonists (Beatrice), who is on a mission to dramatise the true
worth of women (Touaf and Boutkhil 2008: XVIII). Beatrice's mission
to truly present women's history, which has been grossly warped by
patriarchal ethos is informed by the fact that:

From her depiction in the novel, Beatrice could be seen as
Achebe's prototype Amazon. Her ironclad will to change Kangan
politics smacks of the portraiture of mythological Grecian Amazons,
women of Aba Women's Riot of 1929 and Ousmane Sembene's women.
The forte of her political and feminist turf is lodged in her quality
education, exposure, proclivity and quest for political participation.
No wonder she insists Ikem Osodi, the journalist and the editor of The
Gazette realises that there are three kinds of women in her own
thinking: ".peasants, market women and intellectual women"
(92); she belongs to the last group: intellectual women. Beatrice is not
in the same league as Achebe's other women, who are seen as
"good women" (Udumukwu 2007a: 1), passive, apolitical and
unthinking in his earlier works. Thus,

The good women, in Achebe's portrayal drinks the dregs after
her husband. In Arrow of God, when the husband is beating his wife, the
other women stand around saying it's enough, it's enough. In
his view, that kind of subordinate women is good woman. (Adeola 1990:
42)

Rather to be seen as "good woman", who are passive
wearers of masculine straitjacket, Achebe uses Beatrice to illustrate
his ideo-aesthetic perspective on new woman - a departure from his
previous refraction of womanhood. Achebe s view on new women, translates
into real woman, who are participants in the widening of the public
sphere as well as a contributors in the political re-engineering of the
postcolonial Nigerian state. In his Signature of Women, Onyemaechi
Udumukwu brings to the fore the saliency of new (real women):

In reconstructing the public sphere for the development of
democratic culture, the voice and choice of women are a sine qua non. In
this connection, "we need more and more women to speak out in
public" (Ezeigbo 1996: 16) in order to redefine humanity's
imperilled political history. This is largely why Beatrice in Anthills
of the Savannah, questions Ikem's idea about the political roles of
women, even though Achebe presents Ikem as a promoter of liberal
philosophy (91). Although Beatrice's feminist consciousness is
informed by the desire to change women's embittered history, but
there is also an acknowledgement of the expansion of the public sphere
through this attempt: her portraiture interrogates largely "the
actual exclusion of women from the art of governance, as well as their
inability to wield power" (Acholonu 1996: 321) in the public
sphere. In her characteristic manner to further the metamorphosis of
women from private individuals, without any clearly defined public and
political roles to publicly accepted people in politics, Beatrice
reasons that "to be public is to do something that the public will
recognise and acclaim" (Glover 2004: 10). This is what she has done
by seeing her private issue with Ikem as a bridge to better the lots of
womanhood in the public space.

In addition, Beatrice's view about the political participation
of women inheres in expanding the public sphere through putting women at
the centre of history. Her feminism is within the perimeter of the new
women--"The New Testament" (98) women, who are on a voyage to
put women as subjects of history, not objects. In her feminist
philosophy,

Feminism as a method and discourse is animated by a desire to
reconstruct history in order to reconstruct the woman as subject. This
implies that the woman is presented or represented not as a mere object
of history, put at the margin. (Udumumukwu 2007a: 7)

In substantiating the above position, women's participation in
politics, which is a public affair, is a mark of their gradual but
steady movement from the peripheral role they performed in the "Old
Testament" (98) to mainstream (public) role. It is in doing this
that "The sweeping, majestic visions of people rising victorious
like a tidal wave against their oppressors and transforming their
world" (99) comes pointedly.

Conclusion

It is important to state that the actions, voice and portraiture of
Achebe's new women regarding transcending the contradictions of
patriarchal arrangement go beyond the realm of fiction. Correspondingly,
new Nigerian women (as epitomised by Beatrice) in Anthills of the
Savannah have broken their silence through political participation and
widening of the public sphere thereby shrugging off their legendary
albatross of marginalisation, repression, victimisation and exclusion
from political affairs. As a consequence, Achebe's women's
political actions, which resonate with breaking the public-private
dichotomy as well as their empowerment through access to political
participation, is a sine qua non for good governance, participatory
democracy and widened public sphere. In this regard therefore, committed
literature, the one that Achebe writes is a vehicle for impacting the
public sphere for robust, inclusive politics in Nigeria and Africa by
extension.

Uzoechi Nwagbara is a freelance journalist, writer, poet and
academic. He has published articles in various international journals.
His book publication includes Polluted Landscape (2002) and Ambivalent
Voyage (forthcoming). He is completing his doctoral research in
Limkokwing University, London; a member of Association for the Study of
Literature and the Environment (ASLE) and the European Association for
the Study of Literature and the Environment (EASLE). He is also an
adjunct lecturer at London College of Business and Management.

The Nigerian women have, since independence, been denied
opportunities of assuming political leadership at all levels of
governance in the nation's federal set-up. (2007:137)

In the early days of his coming to power I had gone fairly often to
the Palace with Chris and sometimes Chris and Ikem. But then things
had changed quite dramatically after about one year and now apart
from viewing him virtually every night on television news I had not
actually set eyes on him nor had any kind of direct contact for
well over a year. (70-71)

It was clear from the way the crowd stood or sat that the ceremony
was for men. There were many women, but they looked on from the
fringe like outsiders. (85)

in reserve until the ultimate crisis arrives and the waist is
broken and hung over the fire, and the palm bears the fruit at the
tail of its leaf. Then as the world crashes around Man's ears,
woman in her supremacy will descend and sweep the shards. (98)

But the way I see it is that giving women the same role which
traditional society gave them of intervening only when everything
else has failed is not enough, you know, like the women in the
Sembene film who pick up the spears abandoned by their defeated
menfolk. It is not enough that women should be the court of last
resort because the last resort is a damn sight too far and too
late! (91-92)

For weeks and months after I had definitely taken on the challenge
of bringing together as many broken pieces of this tragic history
as I could lay my hands on I still could not find a way to begin.
Anything I tried to put down sounded wrong - either too abrupt, too
indelicate or too obvious - to my middle ear. (82)

I pointed this out to him jokingly as a sure sign of his
chauvinism... In the last couple of years we have argued a lot
about what I have called the chink in his armoury of brilliant and
original ideas. I tell him he has no clear role for women in his
political thinking. (91)

Beatrice had decided on a sudden inspiration to hold a naming
ceremony in her flat for Elewa's baby-girl. She did not intend a
traditional ceremony. Indeed except in the name only she did not
intend ceremony of any kind. (217)

By presiding over the naming ceremony Beatrice breaks protocol.
This is because she performs a role that is traditionally preserved
for a male who is also an elder. (323b)

Achebe presents various perspectives on the problems of
contemporary African nations, represented by Kangan, through the
multiple narrative voices fluctuating between the first-person
point of view (Chris and Ikem), and the third-person limited point
of view. (85)

In the beginning Power rampaged through our world, naked. So the
Almighty, looking at his creation through the round undying eye of
the Sun saw and pondered and finally decided to send his daughter,
Idemili, to bear witness to the moral Nature of authority by
wrapping around power's rude waist a loincloth of peace and
modesty. (102)

Must be analysed as something which circulates... something which
only functions as a chain... Individuals are the vehicles of
power, not its points of application. (1980: 98)

Generally then, whereas male power tends to be crude,
confrontational and direct, female power tends to be subtle,
manipulative and indirect. From a male-centered point of view of
what power is. it is easy to dismiss it as power of an inferior
type, just because it is not hard, aggressive or boastful like the
highly visible male form. (1990:12)

The original oppression of women was based on crude denigration.
She caused men to fall. So she became a scapegoat. No, not a
scapegoat which might be blameless but a culprit richly deserving
of whatever suffering Man chose thereafter to heap on her. (97)

The real woman. is that woman who even in the face of tyranny will
not remain silent. In the history of Nigerian nationalism, for
instance, the real woman is epitomised by the activities of a group
of women who are today known by the Aba Women's Riot of 1929.
(2007a: 1)